quiet_american:I don't disagree with your analysis about the prosecutor, but I also don't think their conclusions about the American legal system is all that off either.

Oh puh-lease Quiet American!Can you even imagine having to give 20 dollars to a cop that stopped you for a spot-check on your way to work just so he won't detain you for a few hours for nothing? That's the way it is right now in Russia. If the Russian cop thinks you are unclear about his expectations he will even let you know up front how much you should pay! That's just how it is there. Russians know all about this.

Our American justice system is far from perfect, but Thank You Jebus we don't have the entrenched corruption like they do in Russia.

Please don't confuse the issue that the death of even one adopted child is "okay".It's not.But that's not really what all of this is about.

Magnitsky was a 37-year-old Russian attorney and accountant who worked for a Russian hedge fund. In the course of his work, he uncovered a giant corruption scheme that involved embezzlements of $230 million from the Russian treasury by both Russian law enforcement and tax officials. After he went public with his accusations he was arrested. While in custody he was beaten to death by guards. His corruption accusation was swept under the carpet and never investigated.

The congressman from Maryland who sponsored the bill is the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, interestingly enough.

The Russian "anti-Magnitsky" law is drawn so wide that it bears absolutely no rational relationship to the harm it's allegedly trying to correct. They didn't even try to hide it.

Word has it that there's even more corruption going on now in China.But apparently we owe them a shiatload of money.

Adopting internationally is usually easier. My husband and I were ineligible for public adoption because we hadn't been married long enough, unless we wanted to take in a "problem teenager" temporarily (which I have done since then, but at the time I was an inexperienced parent). We couldn't compete in the private adoption market -too old, not married long enough, and not wealthy. So we adopted internationally.

There are plenty of children in the US who need homes, but the vast majority are not available for permanent adoption because their parents retain rights even if they can't take care of the child.

Do you believe it would be better for a [nationality] child to live a life of grinding poverty just so he could remain [same nationality], when a first-world life might be made available to him? Our two sons are adopted from Eastern Europe. The younger one had rickets when he came here. Look that one up if you need to. Oh, and he also had a positive response to tuberculosis exposure. He's in good health now. The older one had to have surgery on arrival and sustained an ankle injury over there so bad that it can't be repaired. That happened to him sometime between birth and age 2. He can run about half as fast as the other kids he goes to school with, but he says he's not quitting the basketball team. They were living in a state orphanage and had been since birth. The dust in here always gets worse whenever I think of their lives before they came here, so excuse me while I take care of that.

No. Not good.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

So because you wanted white kids instead of taking care of children from right here in the US you have justified it as saving some child from half way across the world.

Good for you for adopting but you condemned a child of your own nationality to grinding poverty because your kid being white meant more than him or her being American.

A very good friend of my wife adopted a little girl from a Siberian orphanage about 10 years ago. She had an older sister who was not eligible for adoption at the time, but the intention was always to bring the older sister as soon as she was allowed. the would visit repeatedly, multiple times in a year to try and get things moving. She's on a first name basis with everyone up to our Senators. But...a combination of Russian bureaucratic inefficiency, 'Crazy Ivan' politics like this, and a reticence for the adoptive parents to play the usual game of graft and palm-greasing, and the older sister actually aged out of the system before the adoption could be finished...and was kicked out onto the street at 17. About a year ago, she was caught in the middle of a convenience store holdup and shot in the ankle. She couldn't even get a medical emergency visa to the states with the mom offering to pay all expenses. So now she's got a permanent limp, lives on friend's sofas and, despite a family ready willing and able to take care of her, looks forward to a future on being a orphan with a 10th grade education in Siberia.

Worse, they met and were looking to adopt a third child, a boy from the orphanage. That's gone to hell now too.

I blame Stalin. His mind-fark of the Russian people is still having repercussions to this day.

Charles Martel:It was much easier and less expensive for us to adopt internationally. And we put an ocean and a continent between us and the birth parents.

The parents of my ex adopted two children from Russia and one from Vietnam. The Russians required a $50k payment to the government each just to be taken out of the country. That was before any other fees to the adoption agency or anyone else. Total with travel expenses it cost them close to $150k for the two children. The baby from Vietnam cost $35k.

Do you believe it would be better for a [nationality] child to live a life of grinding poverty just so he could remain [same nationality], when a first-world life might be made available to him? Our two sons are adopted from Eastern Europe. The younger one had rickets when he came here. Look that one up if you need to. Oh, and he also had a positive response to tuberculosis exposure. He's in good health now. The older one had to have surgery on arrival and sustained an ankle injury over there so bad that it can't be repaired. That happened to him sometime between birth and age 2. He can run about half as fast as the other kids he goes to school with, but he says he's not quitting the basketball team. They were living in a state orphanage and had been since birth. The dust in here always gets worse whenever I think of their lives before they came here, so excuse me while I take care of that.

No. Not good.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

So because you wanted white kids instead of taking care of children from right here in the US you have justified it as saving some child from half way across the world.

Good for you for adopting but you condemned a child of your own nationality to grinding poverty because your kid being white meant more than him or her being American.

No where in the previous post was race brought up or implied, but way to jump on the big ol' racism ball there Johnny, quck to pull out that slide and go discount race card aren't ya. There are plenty of "white kids"in America who need to be adopted too but that didn't factor in to your equation did, makes me think maybe its you whose got a severe dose of racial difference inspired behavior, you just want somthing to be outraged over... do the world a favor and be quiet for a minute.

It is Russia's response to the Magnitsky Act, a law signed by U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month to bar Russians accused of human rights violations from entering the United States and to freeze any assets they hold there.

Oh, so its the Russians using children as a thin excuse to be assholes to us for no good reason? everyone carry on then...

Do you believe it would be better for a [nationality] child to live a life of grinding poverty just so he could remain [same nationality], when a first-world life might be made available to him? Our two sons are adopted from Eastern Europe. The younger one had rickets when he came here. Look that one up if you need to. Oh, and he also had a positive response to tuberculosis exposure. He's in good health now. The older one had to have surgery on arrival and sustained an ankle injury over there so bad that it can't be repaired. That happened to him sometime between birth and age 2. He can run about half as fast as the other kids he goes to school with, but he says he's not quitting the basketball team. They were living in a state orphanage and had been since birth. The dust in here always gets worse whenever I think of their lives before they came here, so excuse me while I take care of that.

Cymbal:Aren't the brides emotionally and intellectually still children too?

Part of the appeal right?

No, that's just the sales pitch. They're actually the scheming girlfriends of Ukrainian mafiosi, and they're running a scam on the idiots who think some "Russian" babe is desperate enough to marry their fat, old, uncharming ass. They get here, get the green card, dump the loser and bring the boyfriend over.

Americans are more likely to adopt Russian children with defects or from dire upbringings, which is why people are saying the government shouldn't use this bill as payback. Why the fark this even came to light I have no idea. They just countered Obama's bill with their own that is pretty much the same so why they had to throw this adoption one in is just weird.

Good. There are enough children who need homes right here in the states. Every child adopted from outside the US means one more child here likely to grow up in the foster system, be dumped onto the streets at 18 and most probably end up in jail.

Plus, didn't the whole Adopt Russian Children thing come into vogue when Russia took stock after the wall came down and realized that they had like 25 million vagrants under the age of 18?

I had assumed that would peter out sooner or later. They even passed a law a while back to discourage older vagrant kids from "recruiting" younger kids into being vagabonds like Russian Artful Dodgers. Are they still shiatting out vagrants out there in Ruskania? Or are we just slow on the uptake and just adopting from Russia because it's like... what we do... man?

Unaniomous? I guess the Russian Parlaiment showed us! I knew a family who adopted two children from Russia. The baby was fine but the toddler was, without exaggeration, out of control. He shook constantly -- could not handle the sensory overload after 2 years in an orphanage's crib.